Political Quotes

“I rise in strong support of the manager's amendment. I express strong support for the underlying text, including the extensive provisions authored by the Transportation Committee to correct regulatory failures that contributed to the Deepwater Horizon accident and to strengthen the role of the Coast Guard in oil spill response planning and safety management. The manager's amendment includes a number of provisions that improve the underlying text. For example, it imposes civil penalties on chief executive officers who certify information that misrepresents a company's ability to respond to or contain an oil spill. BP wrote in its exploration plan for the Mississippi Canyon 252 site that 'in the event of an anticipated blowout resulting in an oil spill, it is unlikely to have an impact based on the industry-wide standards for using proven equipment and technology for such responses.' Obviously that was a false statement. There were no proven equipment or technologies to respond to the kind of oil spill that occurred in the gulf. The manager's amendment also requires redundancy in accident and spill response plans, something critically needed, given our current lack of proven response equipment and technologies.”